Reflect on the Christian moral life. The moral proposal by Dominic Capone 50 years after the Vatican Second Council

Abstract

Fifty years after the end of the Second Vatican Council, this article was proposed to look at the exciting theological road of one of the professors of the Academy of Moral Theology in Rome (Accademia Alfonsiana), Domenico Capone, who proposed a vision of moral theology for the twenty first century. In a sense, what Capone suggested, was a prophetic vision for the present times, in which the Church develops her teaching. A way of renewal of the moral life proposed by Capone is based on a reflection on man’s action and the moral life. The great theologian understood man as „a person in Christ”, so as one who has experienced the encounter with Christ in his life, he met him, and decided to follow Him. From this experience comes the structure and dynamism of the moral life and on it rests the whole renewal of Christian morality proposed by Domenico Capone: the Christological foundation of the moral life of a Christian, by which Christ becomes in us the principle of existence and activities, call and response as part of the dialogic nature of the relationship of man and God, become similar to Christ, fulfillment of the vocation to live in love, what leads to give an answer to the call to holiness in everyday life. Such a model of Christian morality proposed more than half a century ago was reflected in the documents of the Vatican II as well as in the teaching of the popes: St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis, a fact that makes Domenico Capone’s moral proposal the most current.